Intuitively, anti-science attitudes seem like a major barrier to solving many of the world’s most pressing problems: for example, climate change denial has greatly derailed the American response to climate change, and distrust of public health authorities may be stymying the COVID-19 response. (For instance, a candidate running in my district for State Senate is campaigning on opposition to contact tracing as well as vaccines.) I’m particularly concerned about anti-economics attitudes because they lead to bad economic policies that don’t solve the problems they’re meant to solve, such as protectionism and rent control, and opposition to policies that are actually supported by evidence. Additionally, I’ve heard (but can’t find the source for this) that economists are generally more reluctant to do public outreach in defense of their profession than scientists in other fields are.
Epistemic status: Almost entirely opinion, I’d love to hear counterexamples
When I hear proposals related to instilling certain values widely throughout a population (or preventing the instillation of certain values), I’m always inherently skeptical. I’m not aware of many cases where something like this worked well, at least in a region as large, sophisticated, and polarized as the United States.
You could point to civil rights campaigns, which have generally been successful over long periods of time, but those had the advantage of being run mostly by people who were personally affected (= lots of energy for activism, lots of people “inherently” supporting the movement in a deep and personal way).
If you look at other movements that transformed some part of the U.S. (e.g. bioethics or the conservative legal movement, as seen in Open Phil’s case studies of early field growth), you see narrow targeting of influential people rather than public advocacy.
Rather than thinking about “countering anti-science” more generally, why not focus on specific policies with scientific support? Fighting generically for “science” seems less compelling than pushing for one specific scientific idea (“masks work,” “housing deregulation will lower rents”), and I can think of a lot of cases where scientific ideas won the day in some democratic context.
This isn’t to say that public science advocacy is pointless; you can reach a lot of people by doing that. But I don’t think the people you reach are likely to “matter” much unless they actually campaign for some specific outcome (e.g. I wouldn’t expect a scientist to swing many votes in a national election, but maybe they could push some funding toward an advocacy group for a beneficial policy).
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One other note: I ran a quick search to look for polls on public trust in science, but all I found was a piece from Gallup on public trust in medical advice.
Putting that aside, I’d still guess that a large majority of Americans would claim to be “pro-science” and to “trust science,” even if many of those people actually endorse minority scientific claims (e.g. “X scientists say climate change isn’t a problem”). But I could be overestimating the extent to which people see “science” as a generally positive applause light.
I think a more general, and less antagonizing, way to frame this is “increasing scientific literacy among the general public,” where scientific literacy is seen as a spectrum. For example, increasing scientific literacy among climate activists might make them more likely to advocate for policies that more effectively reduce CO2 emissions.
How pressing is countering anti-science?
Intuitively, anti-science attitudes seem like a major barrier to solving many of the world’s most pressing problems: for example, climate change denial has greatly derailed the American response to climate change, and distrust of public health authorities may be stymying the COVID-19 response. (For instance, a candidate running in my district for State Senate is campaigning on opposition to contact tracing as well as vaccines.) I’m particularly concerned about anti-economics attitudes because they lead to bad economic policies that don’t solve the problems they’re meant to solve, such as protectionism and rent control, and opposition to policies that are actually supported by evidence. Additionally, I’ve heard (but can’t find the source for this) that economists are generally more reluctant to do public outreach in defense of their profession than scientists in other fields are.
Combating antiscience: Are we preparing for the 2020s?
Fauci says “anti-science bias” is a problem in the US
How to Correct Misinformation, According to Science
Epistemic status: Almost entirely opinion, I’d love to hear counterexamples
When I hear proposals related to instilling certain values widely throughout a population (or preventing the instillation of certain values), I’m always inherently skeptical. I’m not aware of many cases where something like this worked well, at least in a region as large, sophisticated, and polarized as the United States.
You could point to civil rights campaigns, which have generally been successful over long periods of time, but those had the advantage of being run mostly by people who were personally affected (= lots of energy for activism, lots of people “inherently” supporting the movement in a deep and personal way).
If you look at other movements that transformed some part of the U.S. (e.g. bioethics or the conservative legal movement, as seen in Open Phil’s case studies of early field growth), you see narrow targeting of influential people rather than public advocacy.
Rather than thinking about “countering anti-science” more generally, why not focus on specific policies with scientific support? Fighting generically for “science” seems less compelling than pushing for one specific scientific idea (“masks work,” “housing deregulation will lower rents”), and I can think of a lot of cases where scientific ideas won the day in some democratic context.
This isn’t to say that public science advocacy is pointless; you can reach a lot of people by doing that. But I don’t think the people you reach are likely to “matter” much unless they actually campaign for some specific outcome (e.g. I wouldn’t expect a scientist to swing many votes in a national election, but maybe they could push some funding toward an advocacy group for a beneficial policy).
****
One other note: I ran a quick search to look for polls on public trust in science, but all I found was a piece from Gallup on public trust in medical advice.
Putting that aside, I’d still guess that a large majority of Americans would claim to be “pro-science” and to “trust science,” even if many of those people actually endorse minority scientific claims (e.g. “X scientists say climate change isn’t a problem”). But I could be overestimating the extent to which people see “science” as a generally positive applause light.
I think a more general, and less antagonizing, way to frame this is “increasing scientific literacy among the general public,” where scientific literacy is seen as a spectrum. For example, increasing scientific literacy among climate activists might make them more likely to advocate for policies that more effectively reduce CO2 emissions.